Consistency/Inconsistency

A word on consistency and labels: we could do better without them.

This is quite unfortunate since we live in a society of strict labeling: girl, boy, liberal, conservative, Muslim, bible-thumper, secular, middle-aged, black, white, bad student, good student, ugly, beautiful, rich, poor….what’s worse is that every one of these labels assume certain identities and expectations. By labeling, we trick our minds into thinking we know.

In a world with so much variety, variation, and outcome, our mind has no other choice but to compartmentalize. If we were unable divide, organize, and put things in their proper boxes and files, our minds would overload and burn out. But I like to think we are bright enough to further question our own labels and definitions of what we think things are and are not, and who we think people are and are not.

Ralph Waldo Emerson has a lot to say on this topic in his essay, Self Reliance, which I turn to when feeling the pressures of my own labels:

A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do.

Consistency (or more specifically, foolish consistency) leads to boredom and predictability, a life where decisions are made based on comfort and expectation. To live like this is to live an untrue life. I wish to live in the moment, and to make decisions based on the context and color of those moments.

We build our identities by the choices we make, the conversation we make. But nothing is ever the same, change is ever-occurring, and each one of us is dynamic, changing dramatically with each day. We become older and wiser with every moment that passes. Each day is a new opportunity, with myriad choices to choose from, and if we wish, we have the power to divert from the known, the labels, and go somewhere new.

Once we understand this, we can shift our view by accepting that we don’t truly know anything (or anyone–even our own self), and take every interaction as its first. We must honor the people around us for their dynamics; we must accept them for their process, not their static label our culture deems necessary.

Being inconsistent is not the same as being hypocritical. The difference is in the intent: inconsistency comes from the unpredictable choices one makes from living in the exact context of any present moment, hypocrisy is claiming to be one thing while secretly adhering to its opposite. Inconsistency is based on truth, hypocrisy from deceit.

So call me inconsistent, because that is how I strive to live my life: truthfully and in the moment.

EMERSON ON FOOLISH CONSISTENCY

“What I must do is all that concerns me, not what people think…You will always find those who think they know what is your duty better than you know it. It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after our own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.”

“The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.”

“To be great is to be misunderstood.”

Elizabeth Gilbert & Crazy Creativity

Elizabeth Gilbert, author of “Eat, Pray, Love” challenges the association of creative genius and insanity. In a lot of ways I agree with her (we must see creativity springing forth from our interconnected experiences in this world–creativity inspires creativity, and so on. A creative genius do not live in a vacuum. [Exception: Emily Dickinson]). But at the same time, I think the best work I have ever done is when I am on the brink of insanity; darkness produces profound art.

I don’t think that being creative makes people crazy, I think crazy people are creative.

Words on Supermarkerts by David Foster Wallace

“By way of example, let’s say it’s an average adult day, and you get up in the morning, go to your challenging, white-collar, college-graduate job, and you work hard for eight or ten hours, and at the end of the day you’re tired and somewhat stressed and all you want is to go home and have a good supper and maybe unwind for an hour, and then hit the sack early because, of course, you have to get up the next day and do it all again. But then you remember there’s no food at home. You haven’t had time to shop this week because of your challenging job, and so now after work you have to get in your car and drive to the supermarket. It’s the end of the work day and the traffic is apt to be: very bad. So getting to the store takes way longer than it should, and when you finally get there, the supermarket is very crowded, because of course it’s the time of day when all the other people with jobs also try to squeeze in some grocery shopping. And the store is hideously lit and infused with soul-killing muzak or corporate pop and it’s pretty much the last place you want to be but you can’t just get in and quickly out; you have to wander all over the huge, over-lit store’s confusing aisles to find the stuff you want and you have to maneuver your junky cart through all these other tired, hurried people with carts (et cetera, et cetera, cutting stuff out because this is a long ceremony) and eventually you get all your supper supplies, except now it turns out there aren’t enough check-out lanes open even though it’s the end-of-the-day rush. So the checkout line is incredibly long, which is stupid and infuriating. But you can’t take your frustration out on the frantic lady working the register, who is overworked at a job whose daily tedium and meaninglessness surpasses the imagination of any of us here at a prestigious college.

The Fall of the Rational Species

In ethics today we talked about Paul Taylor’s life-centered environmental ethic. His basic argument is we as humans have no right to say we are any better than other life on this earth, because the criteria we use is rationality. This is unfair because most other creatures do not need rationality to survive. Actually, they would probably not last very long if they did have rationality. But we use this as our litmus test, which is completely unfair. Who decided rationality is what makes a creature so great? Why not use speed, or eye sight, or swimming capabilities as the test? Every species is great in its own way, and this needs to be so. We are interconnected with all other species in a complex web of life. Every creature needs to be good at what they do so we can be good at we do. There is no value to ranking creatures, and thus our whole attitude of dominance over non-humans is just plain wrong. Who says the bird’s life is worth any less than ours just because it cannot think rationally? It’s all a facade.